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The initiative seeking to reroute 25% of Portland Clean Energy Fund tax revenues to hire some 400 police officers has failed to qualify for the November ballot. The initiative previously failed to qualify with its first signature sample. It has now failed to qualify with the second and final sample.
Almost immediately following an announcement by the city of Portland’s Elections Division that the petition collected only 34,130 valid signatures—more than 6,000 short of the 40,437 needed to make the ballot—backers of the initiative said they intended to sue the city over the results.
“On behalf of disenfranchised Portland voters, we intend to file legal action challenging this decision and process,” Aaron Schmautz, president of the Portland Police Association, the initiative’s main financial backer, said in a statement. “The fight for a safer, better Portland for everyone is not over.”
The Elections Division announced Tuesday that the petition contained only 34,130 valid signatures of registered Portland voters. That’s more than 6,000 signatures short of the 40,437 needed to make it to the ballot. The campaign behind the measure initially submitted more than 63,000 signatures. The city’s Elections Division sent 55,837 signatures to the Multnomah County Elections Division for sampling. Both samples failed.
Most of the rejected signatures were from people who were not registered to vote in Portland, the elections office says. “Only 61% of signatures in statistical samples were valid,” Deborah Scroggin, manager of the city’s Elections Division, wrote on Tuesday. “In the combined samples, over 70% of rejected signatures were from signers who were not registered voters or did not live in Portland.”
But the submitted signatures had many problems. According to the city elections office, many people signed the petition twice, or even three times. Signature gatherers also handed in blank signature lines, unapproved petition sheets or sheets that didn’t qualify under state law, and signatures that petitioners had struck out before submitting them or that had been altered without verification.
The initiative previously faced a bevy of allegations that its canvassers unlawfully misled the public while collecting signatures. Nearly 100 people have filed formal complaints with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. And in recent weeks, Safer Portland leveled its own allegations that city elections staff was biased against it and unlawfully threw out sheets of signatures. Those allegations prompted Secretary of State Tobias Read to send a letter to City Auditor Simone Rede, telling her to run a tighter ship and raising concerns that the debacle could undermine trust in elections at a time when President Trump is doing everything he can to do just that. Rede and the city’s Elections Division have denied the campaign’s allegations.
